California Fire Experts To Donald Trump: Malibu Is Not a Forest

Donald Trump was slammed over the weekend for criticizing California’s “forest management” while firefighters and residents were battling three major wildfires. But experts also pointed out to the president that places like Thousand Oaks, Malibu and Paradise were not “forests.”

On Saturday, Trump wrote:

There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

MacDonald called Trump’s tweet an “insult and so uninformed. It was a statement made with insensitivity and ignorance.”

Pasadena fire officials had a similar message for Trump:

Mr. President, with all due respect, you are wrong. The fires in So. Cal are urban interface fires and have NOTHING to do with forest management. Come to SoCal and learn the facts & help the victims. Scott Austin, Pres IAFF 809. @IAFFNewsDeskhttps://t.co/d3jY0SeosF

Gov. Jerry Brown’s office said the president’s comments were “inane and uniformed.”

“Our focus is on the Californians impacted by these fires and the first responders and firefighters working around the clock to save lives and property — not on the president’s inane and uninformed tweets,” Brown’s Press Secretary Evan Westrup said in a statement Sunday.

Although California wildfires have occurred naturally over the centuries, climate change is making them worse. Temperatures remain high for longer stretches of the year, rainfall has dropped and hot dry winds have increased.